The history of the Notre Dame: From a Pagan Temple to Gothic Cathedral. It is known that a Gallo-Roman Temple dedicated to the God Jupiter stood at the same site before the advent of Christianity in France. The Pillar of the Boatmen, a monumental Roman column erected in Lutetia (modern Paris) in honour of Jupiter by the guild of boatmen in the 1st century AD, found in 1710 during the construction of a crypt under the nave of Notre-Dame and first published by Baudelot de Dairval in 1712, is testament to the fact. The pillar was dated by a dedication to the Roman Emperor Tiberius Caesar Augustus who assumed the seat of the Emperor in 14 A.D.
Four Christian structures are believed to have succeeded the Pagan Temple to Jupiter before the Notre Dame. The first, the 4th-century Basilica of Saint Etienne, then a Merovingian renovation of the same which was later remodelled into a Cathedral in the 9th Century. Then, there was another remodelling of the structures before the culmination into the Notre Dame. The last structure before the Notre Dame was demolished and its material was recycled to build the Gothic Cathedral.
